The Swedish dad who's spent the last few months attempting to squeeze milk from his breasts has thrown in the towel, with nothing more than "sore breasts" to show for his efforts.
Student Ragnar Bengtsson, 26, said that male lactation "could prove very important for men's ability to get much closer to their children at an early …

@pascal

Estrogen is produced produced when testosterone breaks down; hence the impressive bust-lines one used to see among steroid users in the NFL. (At least, the chemistry is correct, and the shapes were there.) I don't think any sportswriters were rash enough to ask 300+ pound, roid-raging linemen about lactation, though.

Blinding

Why

Stephen Jay Gould

The late Stephen Jay Gould wrote an excellent mini-essay on the subject of useless physical phenmonena, namely nipples on men and the orgasm in women. It all boils down to embryology, apparently. But the best part was the title: "Male Nipples and Clitoral Ripples", which Stephen's wife came up with after the publisher balked at Stephen's first title "Tits and Clits"

@AC 17:06 re. Why

Re: why nipples

Human embryos are sex-undifferentiated from a physical structure standpoint for several months during development, but the nipple structure is present early on. Just as the genitals are analogous between the sexes (with different parts more or less developed and in different ways), so too breast development differentiates later through hormone production. In other words we all get everything to make either male or female bodies, and which side gets activated by hormones is determined by chemicals. More efficient to standardize the chassis and determine configuration by setting different switches, I guess.

No one told him?

fail to do research

Step one: Realise that manual stimulation will do nothing much, as it'll be little more than what (non steroidal) bodybuilders and/or marathon runners undergo. And they're lactating, like, all the time. Not.

Step two: Realise hormones of some kind will be necessary, and this WILL result in near-irreversible (without moob-reduction surgery) growth. There are many paths available, from pills to herbs to beer to topical creams (that hopefully avoid some of the systemic effects that the others would have).

Step three: Realise some other guy has already beaten you to the punch using step two. I'm dead certain on having at least read in a book of oddities about an american who wished to breastfeed his child after his wife died giving birth, so hit up a drastic course of hormones and was fully enmoobed by the end of the year (though that was probably just in time for baby to get teeth and start weaning... not to mention the problem of undersized nippleage). However when I try googling for such an account all I get is this article's titular herbert.

There was another who did it for a bet - and won it, but liked the swollen chesticles so much that he kept them - but I can't be certain that wasn't just implants rather than the fully functional real deal.